A set of five city council zoning bills was introduced this spring as the Housing Options and Opportunity Act. City agencies are studying them before sharing their recommendations with city council, which will then hold public hearings this fall. City council would have to vote on the bills by the end of the year to prevent them from expiring with this year’s legislative session.
The city’s long-awaited, streamlined e-permitting system, kicked off in February to make it easier and faster for homeowners and builders to get construction permits, is a flop, a survey by the Baltimore Banner illustrated this month. In Bolton Hill, the number of permits issued during the first half of 2025 plunged by more than 100 percent over last year.
The city’s Board of Estimates will meet and presumably approve the reinstatement of Midtown Community Business District on Tuesday, June 20, the last step in rectifying a screwup by the city council last year that cast a legal cloud over the special district’s legitimacy.
Voters in Bolton Hill and three other neighborhoods making up Midtown, the special tax district, have voted by more than a two-to-one margin to keep the community service district operating. While the final vote is expected to be released and certified by the city comptroller’s office on April 18, Midtown officials shared unofficial results.
For nearly 30 years, Midtown Community Benefits District has kept Bolton Hill and three other nearby neighborhoods cleaner, greener, and safer, supplementing city government services. But unless property owners in those locales vote Yes before March 27 to re-certify Midtown, those services will disappear.
After decades of mostly ignoring federal law requiring curbs and sidewalks to meet the needs of disabled pedestrians, the city has entered into yet another consent decree with the federal government. It is an outgrowth of a class action legal confrontation with a Maryland disability rights coalition.
Residents of Bolton Hill and three nearby neighborhoods can expect a special election this spring to re-affirm support for the Midtown Benefits District, the advocacy and improvement group created by a voter referendum in the mid-1990s to strengthen public services for the neighborhoods.
Many of us in Bolton Hill live in large, often drafty homes or apartments, and so we’re accustomed to, if not happy about, exorbitant utility bills in addition to high city and state taxes. But the double-whammy of a big bump in city water and sewer bill rates, paired with BGE’s surprisingly high winter gas and electric charges, has lots of neighborhood ratepayers groaning. What’s it all about and what, if anything, can be done?
When new 11th District city council member Zac Blanchard took his oath of office on Dec. 5, he quickly discovered that his assigned office in the main city hall building would not house his authorized staff. Then he learned that his offer to a man whom he wanted as his legislative director had been screwed up by the city’s personnel office.
Eric Costello is out of office now – looking back mostly fondly on a decade as the city council member representing Bolton Hill. He’s looking to start a new phase of professional development that doesn’t involve city government.
